3 Video Trends Your Brand Should Master

Need to get a handle on the most important video trends for 2017? We’ve gathered our top three that will take you farthest this year:

1) Forget Mobile-Friendly, Focus on Mobile-First

It used to be that the focus was ensuring your digital presence was (key word) complemented by a mobile-friendly one. That’s changing.

As more and more people replace their desktop use for mobile—from behaviors like social and search to purchase and discovery—you’ll want to make sure you’re keeping pace with how you design your video content to best cater to your audience.

2) Two Words: Vertical Video

There’s a reason why vertical is having a serious moment. If users are more likely to pick up their mobile phones than they are to crack open a laptop, then the content they experience needs to match that behavior. Because when it does, your message becomes that much stronger.

Snap Ads

Snapchat took the vertical video world by storm, catering to a use-case that took advantage of the fact that few social communications mirrored the way users actually hold their phone—cue the vertical video trend that has now ballooned into a communication standard.

Instagram Stories

To combat the uber-popularity of Snapchat’s Stories feature, Instagram quickly rolled out its very own copy-cat version. And while it varies little from Snapchat’s, it’s just as (if not more!) popular—and well worth creating content customized for this Instagram audience.

Facebook News Feed

With the launch of Facebook’s mobile app, the News Feed was re-designed with mobile in mind—for both desktop and mobile. It’s a narrow, vertically-focused, list-like appearance makes it super easy for a user to thumb or scroll through a mass of content. But what gets those thumbs to stop? An engaging video that eats up as much News Feed real estate as possible…and that’s vertical.

Pinterest

Not to be overshadowed by the likes of Facebook or Snapchat, Pinterest recently rolled out a selection of new video offerings to their advertisers. And, yep, you guessed it—vertical is big. Not only does it take up more feed real estate, but it also encourages users to give their undivided attention to your content.

Spotify

Spotify casually boasts a dedicated audience of 100 million active users that spends a whopping 110 minutes listening per day. That’s some serious face time. It’s no surprise that they, too, recently released a vertical video ad unit to help businesses reach this highly engaged group.

3) Get Comfortable with Cross-Platform

While platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all rely on vertical video to support their mobile-first experience, not all vertical video is or should be created the same. Each platform has unique audience experiences and expected aesthetics. That’s why having a cross-platform strategy in place is critical if you’re going to take advantage of the vertical video benefits. Not sure where to begin? Our VidMob experts are trained and vetted in each platform’s specs and best practices. So when you hire a VidMob creator, you know your video will be totally customized for the platform of your choice.